Happy Anniversary Chris Coleman!

Happy Anniversary Chris Coleman! You’ve been in the Sky Blue hotseat for twelve months now. Unfortunately we all know that very few Coventry City managers seem to manage to survive the next twelve though. Will CC be any different or will he be another to fall by the wayside? Time for the Welshman’s annual appraisal....

It’s often said that results will ultimately decide a manager’s fate, so let’s dive straight in and look at Coleman’s record so far. CC has been in charge for 52 games; winning 17, losing 18 and drawing 17, giving him a win percentage of 32.69% and averaging 1.31 points per game - not too bad but not particularly great either.

His three immediate predecessors (Iain Dowie, Micky Adams and Peter Reid) had win percentages of 40.81%, 33.33% and 32.3% respectively and earned 1.65, 1.40 and 1.39 points per game. It’d seem from this that his record so far is on a par with the previous incumbents, but we all know what happened to them….

So what else has Coleman bought to the team? An astute tactical masterplan maybe? If you’d asked me at the end of last season after we only stayed up due to the width of a post I’d have said definitely not.

He obviously felt the squad wasn’t very strong when he turned up, and set the team up very defensively at the time to compensate. Although he managed to slightly strengthen the defence as a result it seemed to make the attack much worse, making me feel like we’d lost more than we’d gained.

This season we still have quite a defensive set-up, but given that he was a defender in his playing days this shouldn’t be overly surprising. As we still largely lack a proper attacking threat from midfield it makes sense to keep things quite tight at the back and we seem more difficult to beat now.

Part of that might be due to the players CC’s brought in though. Westwood is a superb acquisition and easily player of the year so far. Wright has looked good either on the right or in the centre of defence, but has been slightly unfortunate with injuries.

Gunnarsson is an amazing find and seems to have pushed Doyle into upping his game recently, and in Beuzelin we have the best passer of a ball since McAllister, even if he does look off the pace at times.

Up front, Clinton Morrison is knocking the ball in the net pretty regularly and looks a proper goalscorer whereas Freddy Eastwood has occasionally shown glimpses of his talent but can’t seem to get a scoring run going, possibly because he has to spend so much time dropping deep to fill the space that should be occupied by an attacking midfielder.

Coleman has looked to address the problem of our lack of width and attacking creativity with the acquisition of Bell and loans of Henderson and Sawyer, which has given the squad a much better balance. There are still some squad weaknesses (such as the lack of more experienced cover at right-back and an overly defensive central midfield) but overall we have a squad that should be able to compete at the very least.

Some may argue that Coleman has had the good fortune of having money to spend which previous managers didn’t, and although there is some truth in that it’s still very easy to waste money in the transfer market but Coleman hasn’t done too badly thus far.

CC also seems to have a decent understanding of finances, trying to trim the wage bill by getting rid of players who just weren’t up to Championship standard either permanently or on loan, thus freeing up resources and squad positions for better players.

His man-management approach towards some of those he considered ‘surplus to requirements’, such as Birchall, Borrowdale and Kyle, did seem a bit strange to me. Although you have to admire his honesty with the players and their futures at the club, his constant appraisal that they would never be considered for first team duties appeared quite odd, especially when we were left with no right-sided players at all but Birchall was still available.

They may not have been the greatest players ever but surely in an emergency they’d have been better than nothing? He dealt with the Mifsud saga well though, refusing to become too critical despite the obvious problems the situation was causing him.

After the team just rolled over against Charlton in a game that could have seen us drop into the third tier of English football I was asking myself “if a manager can’t motivate players for a game like that then when can he?” but in recent weeks the squad has been down to the bare bones due to injuries and suspensions and the team have ground out a number of decent results.

The recent comeback against Blackburn shows he knows when something isn’t working, is willing to admit it and change the tactics and personnel if necessary. He also doesn’t spend the entire game on the touchline barking out instructions and shows faith in the players to just get on with it. When he does appear in the technical area the players must surely know he’s got something important to say.

Many of his pre-match interviews seem to focus a bit too much on the good points of the opposition and our own problems for my liking, almost as if he was getting excuses ready. Before the FA Cup ties against Kidderminster and Torquay he was constantly quoted as saying things along the lines of “we don’t want to be the shock of the round” and “we’ve got to be careful”, which are just going to make the players jittery and nervous in my opinion.

Obviously you don’t want the players to get complacent and ultimately we won both those games, but just a bit more optimism and focusing on our strengths a bit more wouldn’t go amiss in my book. He’s very honest in his post-match assessments and if he thought we were rubbish he says so, but does give praise where it’s due.

His relationship with the fans and the media seems to be pretty good. He’s attended a couple of fans’ forums and come across as approachable and articulate, and although I’ve never had the opportunity to speak to him personally those that have say he comes across very well.

Most importantly though is that he seems to have an exceptional relationship with the chairman, with both of them singing from the same hymn sheet and trying to achieve the same goals in the same way. Many people say that Jimmy Hill was able to be such an excellent manager for this club because of the support of his chairman Derrick Robins, and hopefully the current partnership can continue in a similar vein.

Results maybe haven’t been much better than under previous managers but you do get the impression that Coleman is steadily moving the team in the right direction. Maybe that’s due to the fact he’s had some money to bring in players which those in charge before him didn’t, but you’ve still got to invest it wisely and so far for the most part he has. There are gaps in the squad that need filling but CC knows this and is on the look-out.

Hopefully he’ll do this in the summer and next season the team will have a more positive and attack-minded approach, allowing us to push even higher up the table and start considering promotion as a realistic target.

I feel an air of optimism that better times are ahead, that Coleman knows what he’s doing and is slowly making his vision a reality. This is a rare feeling for a Coventry fan so Carry On Chris!